5 reasons why your internet is slow and how to fix it

Remember the times when we could make ourselves a nice cup of tea while a web page was loading? Ah, that familiar sound… But the days of dial-up are long gone, and we became very impatient since then. A web page that loads for longer than a couple of seconds? No, thanks. Easier to find what we are looking for elsewhere — on a site that loads quickly.

We’re used to a speedy internet connection, and we get annoyed with even a slight delay. Especially, when we’re streaming or playing online games. Did you ever lose because of high ping? Yeah, we feel your pain.

Sure, we could handle occasional speed drops. But when the internet connection is mostly slow — it becomes nearly impossible for us to perform work tasks (especially, since nowadays a lot of us work at home), play favorite games and watch shows, and even browse. The good news is that, in most cases, you can fix the issue. However, it might take some effort.

In this article, we will take a look at the most widely-spread reasons for slow speeds and interruptions and find solutions to them.

Reason #1 — Your provider doesn’t do a good job

Unfortunately, quite a lot of internet service providers don’t deliver the quality and speeds they promise in their ads. Trying to get as many clients as possible, they also try to save money on the hardware, software, and workforce. The results are expectable — servers can’t handle the load, and staff lacks resources to improve the performance of the hardware.

If that’s your case, you really can’t do anything about it. Try looking up what other clients of your provider say about the quality. And if many of them complain about speeds and interruptions — your ISP is to blame.

The only way to deal with this situation is to switch to another provider and hope that this one will be better.

Reason #2 — The cable matters

So, the internet is basically a net of cables that serve as highways for data. Continents are connected by large cables, and we get our piece of online goodness through smaller cables. The latter impact the quality of connection we have quite a bit. The fastest type is fiber optic cabling — it can deliver smooth connection and high speeds. Unfortunately, you can’t get this type of cable everywhere.

Find out what cable your internet service provider is using and upgrade to the fiber optic one if there is such an option. You will feel the difference once you do that. However, if your provider doesn’t offer fiber optic cabling, ask the tech support to just check the cable you have already for any issues — physical damage impacts the quality of your internet connection a lot.

Reason #3 — Your provider is throttling you

Are you playing online games, streaming, or performing some other traffic-heavy tasks a lot? Then your provider might be throttling you. It means that your ISP detects that you’re using an abnormally high amount of bandwidth and limits it for you so that you don’t eat into resources that are meant to be left for other users. Some would say that the provider is doing the right thing — there are other users. But it’s also isn’t fair to you, is it?

There are two solutions for this issue. The first one is to check if there are more advanced plans that would satisfy your needs for the internet connection. For example, you could get a higher speed if your internet service provider offers such an option. If it doesn’t or you’re already using a more expensive plan — the solution is to trick the provider since it tricks you.

To do that, you can use a VPN app to hide your activity from the internet service provider. The iNinja VPN app comes for all operating systems and is completely free. It will help you deal with your greedy ISP. If you can see that the speed goes up when you have the VPN on — your provider is definitely throttling you.

Reason #4 — Your router isn’t that good

Maybe it’s that your router simply doesn’t cover that much of a territory — therefore, you have a worse connection in that part of your home where you’re trying to enjoy your online activity. If that’s the case, you can try either moving the router closer to you or getting one of those wireless range extenders to quickly increase the coverage of your WiFi network.

Or maybe your router is outdated and it doesn’t support the speed your provider offers. As technology improves, ISPs can offer higher bandwidth. But if your router is years old and it was released when the slower speed was considered fast, it might just not be able to provide you the speed you’re supposed to have according to your pricing plan. In this case, you need to retire your loyal router and get a newer one.

Reason #5 — You’re using a VPN app

We always tell that our iNinja VPN doesn’t impact the speed much and it’s true. To some extent. As you might already know, VPNs offer several servers to connect to. They’re usually located in different countries so that users can choose the location they need. The farther away from you the VPN server is, the longer it will take for data to travel from your device to the VPN server and then to the destination server, and back. So if you don’t need to access geo-restricted content, and you don’t really care for the location of a VPN server, opt for the closest one. If your goal is to become more anonymous online, even connecting to the server that’s located in your country will do the job without messing with your speeds.

These are the simplest and most popular issues that cause delays during your online activities. If you went through all these reasons and none seems to be your case, check your device for malware and try updating drivers for your wireless adapter.